# Proper Spelling of "County's" inre County Tournament **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 7, 2016, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164 "2016-05-07T11:27:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![minlokwat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minlokwat/32/2844_2.png) [@minlokwat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minlokwat)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2016, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/1 "2016-05-07T11:27:02Z")
In high school sports and such, there are post-season tournaments at various levels. There are county tournaments, regional tournaments and state tournaments. When they are shortened down, what is the proper spelling of each? Should it be “regional’s” and “state’s” -with the apostrophe? That seems to make sense since it is the regional’s and state’s end-of-season tournament. But what about for the county? “County’s” would seem to follow this line of thinking but that looks positively wrong and calling it “counties” (with or without the apostrophe) seems to run counter to the above logic in calling the tournament “state’s” and not “states” (I mean why would that be pluralized?) Not of earth-shattering importance but I would like to get it right in official correspondence. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2016, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/2 "2016-05-07T13:57:26Z")
“County’s” is the proper possessive form for “county”; however, I don’t think you want a possessive in this case. I would say you’re making a plural – stealing the final “s” from regional and taking it onto the the first part. ---
**Author:** ![boffking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/858c86/32.png) [@boffking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boffking)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2016, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/3 "2016-05-07T14:05:53Z")
I think it would be county’s. Counties is plural, so if there is a multi-county tournament, it could be called counties’, or more likely, regional’s. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2016, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/4 "2016-05-07T15:45:18Z")
I think the rule is that you use the adjectival version of the name of the area. In some cases the adjectival version is the same as the nominal version. The adjectival and nominal versions of some areas are as below: Noun - Adjective borough - borough city - city township - township county - county region - regional district - district state - state province - provincial territory - territorial country (or nation) - national continent - continental world - international I would thus talk about the borough tournament, the city tournament, the township tournament, the county tournament, the regional tournament, the district tournament, the state tournament, the provincial tournament, the territorial tournament, the national tournament, the continental tournament, and the international tournament. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2016, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/5 "2016-05-07T15:50:04Z")
What **OldGuy** said. Are you asking about using the word in isolation? First of all, it isn’t “regional’s end-of-season tournament,” ever. Regional is an adjective, and they don’t take the possessive. By that logic, here “regional,” “state,” and “county” are all modifying “tournament,” as does “end-of-season.” I think what is happen here is you have one regional end-of-season tournament → one regional two regional end-of-season tournaments → two regionals. (“Regional” is now being used as a substantive for the whole phrase, and can thus take -s. In theory, it could now take -’s, too, but there’s no motivation. It doesn’t have a possessive or genitival relationship to the rest of the phrase.) I wouldn’t use the apostrophe: we are sending students to the Regionals, the Counties, and the States. (I’m capitalizing because I think they’re definite nouns, and it makes it clear that by the States you don’t mean Alabama, Arkansas, and Alaska.) ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2016, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/6 "2016-05-07T15:52:35Z")
Actually, I don’t think the possessive or the apostrophe is needed. I think on first mention, you would refer to the regional tournament, and then just the “regional” later. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2016, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/7 "2016-05-07T16:13:39Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > What **OldGuy** said. > > Are you asking about using the word in isolation? > > First of all, it isn’t “regional’s end-of-season tournament,” ever. Regional is an adjective, and they don’t take the possessive. By that logic, here “regional,” “state,” and “county” are all modifying “tournament,” as does “end-of-season.” > > I think what is happen here is you have > > one regional end-of-season tournament → one regional > two regional end-of-season tournaments → two regionals. > > (“Regional” is now being used as a substantive for the whole phrase, and can thus take -s. In theory, it could now take -’s, too, but there’s no motivation. It doesn’t have a possessive or genitival relationship to the rest of the phrase.) > > I wouldn’t use the apostrophe: we are sending students to the Regionals, the Counties, and the States. (I’m capitalizing because I think they’re definite nouns, and it makes it clear that by the States you don’t mean Alabama, Arkansas, and Alaska.) This is correct. These are not possessives. The apostrophe is wrong. “We won at the regionals.” “We won at state.” (I doubt that “at the states” is common, but if that’s what people are saying, then fine.) On that model, I would say “We won at county” or “We won at the counties.” I disagree with Drake on capitalization. These are not proper nouns. ---
**Author:** ![minlokwat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minlokwat/32/2844_2.png) [@minlokwat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minlokwat)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2016, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/8 "2016-05-07T16:22:09Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Are you asking about using the word in isolation? > > First of all, it isn’t “regional’s end-of-season tournament,” ever. Regional is an adjective, and they don’t take the possessive. By that logic, here “regional,” “state,” and “county” are all modifying “tournament,” as does “end-of-season.” You are correct. “Regional’s end-of-season tournament” doesn’t make sense. I don’t know if it’s a linguistic quirk unique to this area but people will use “states”/“regionals” (with or without the apostrophe) and by extension “county?s” Sample phrases: “The team’s been doing well and with some luck, might make it to states.” (The tournament that determines the championship for this one state.) “How do you think you all will do in regionals?” (The region consists of several counties but is a single post-season tournament.) “When do counties begin?” (the county championship for that one particular county). It’s that last one that throws me. Why would it be “counties” if the tournament is comprised of teams from only one county? And “county’s” in addition to getting pinged every time by spell-check just doesn’t look right. (I know that it is the proper form of the possessive and looks fine in the sense of: “The county’s board of control meets every two weeks.”) ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2016, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/9 "2016-05-07T16:25:11Z")
No apostrophes. We’re not talking about possessives here. Counties, regionals, states. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2016, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/10 "2016-05-07T18:19:17Z")
My guess is that “regionals” is used for regional tournaments with multiple categories. Typically there might be boys and girls, and/or different sizes of schools competing (AA, AAA, etc.). So you might be regional AA champions if you win at the regionals, where several other tiers competed for equivalent championships. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2016, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/11 "2016-05-07T18:55:07Z")
I agree; if the tournament involves multiple regional competitions, regionals (without an apostrophe, because it’s not a possessive) is appropriate. I remember the NBC drama series **Friday Night Lights** about a small-town high school football team in Texas. In that show, as I remember, the players talked about making it to “state”, meaning the state-wide championship tournament. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2016, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/12 "2016-05-08T00:43:29Z")
For clarity, I would write “county’s” to mean “county-level competition events”, and ignore the pedants. Just as I would write “P’s and Q’s”, which are also simple plurals, but writing them according to “the rules” leads to confusion. Or “Mc’s on surnames are sometimes alphabetized as if t hey were Mac’s”. Or “The’s and A’s at the beginning of titles are ignored when alphabetizing.” ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2016, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/13 "2016-05-08T00:50:19Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > For clarity, I would write “county’s” to mean “county-level competition events”, and ignore the pedants. Just as I would write “P’s and Q’s”, which are also simple plurals, but writing them according to “the rules” leads to confusion. Or “Mc’s on surnames are sometimes alphabetized as if t hey were Mac’s”. Or “The’s and A’s at the beginning of titles are ignored when alphabetizing.” P’s and Ps and _P_s are all generally accepted in common usage. “County’s” means “belonging to the county.” You’re basically inventing a new usage because of some vague lack of clarity, which I don’t think exists at all here. “Regionals” and “nationals” are all very well understood common terms. There’s no reason that “counties” in the same context suddenly becomes difficult to understand. Except, as I said before, I’m a bit skeptical that people do say “counties” or “states” in this context. I would expect to hear “We won at state” or “We won at county” much more commonly. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2016, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/14 "2016-05-08T01:51:19Z")
Every time you use an apostrophe to make a word plural, a puppy dies. ---
**Author:** ![sbunny8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@sbunny8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbunny8)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2016, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/15 "2016-05-08T14:54:16Z")
> [@ThelmaLou](#): > > Every time you use an apostrophe to make a word plural, a puppy dies. Jill always got straight A’s on her report cards because she dots her i’s and crosses her t’s. If her friends would just learn to mind their p’s and q’s, all of them could end up getting Ph.D.'s. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2016, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/16 "2016-05-08T15:43:51Z")
It’s a little bit like the “would you serve a pregnant woman alcohol” thread. It used to be that apostrophes were used for the plural in specific circumstances, as in **sbunny8** ’s post. (Or rather, the apostrophe was used to signal a change between letter-as-word or numeral-as-word and the regular ol’ letter-as-letter S.) The the writers of style guides decided we writers couldn’t handle this. Even a single correct-apostrophe-in-a-plural opened the floodgate’s to ridiculou’s error’s. So a zero-toleran’ce poli’cy wa’s introdu’ced: apostrophes are no longer correct for any plurals, though some style guides (like Chicago) grudingly admit that they were just fine up until very recently. Really, they should be dropped. They’re just a shibboleth between the educated who pay attention and the rest; they’re not a grammatical necessity. We do just fine without them in speech, and they’re falling away in the plural, anyway. (Nobody writes “Teachers’ Union,” not even the teachers, and people come up with ridiculous ad hoc rules as to why not.) ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2016, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/17 "2016-05-08T16:02:25Z")
It’s plural, not possessive. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/18 "2016-05-09T02:09:16Z")
The Olympic Games =\> the Olympics Regional Championships =\> the Regionals County Championships =\> the Counties ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proper-spelling-of-countys-inre-county-tournament/754164/19 "2016-05-09T02:16:45Z")
> [@sbunny8](#): > > Jill always got straight A’s on her report cards because she dots her i’s and crosses her t’s. If her friends would just learn to mind their p’s and q’s, all of them could end up getting Ph.D.'s. Those aren’t words.